Cambridgeshire Firefighter Sonya Hawes got the shock of her life when boyfriend Jake Bourne, from the Parachute Regiment, Colchester, turned up at Huntingdon Fire Station in his uniform - complete with red sash and medals - to propose.

After joking a couple of weeks earlier that she’d love to be proposed to in ‘An Officer and a Gentleman style’, Jake did just that – organising for the station to play Sonya’s favourite song from the film, Up Where We Belong, as he walked up the steps to the mess room.

Sonya said the proposal, just before Christmas, came completely out of the blue.

“There were 20 new recruits in the yard, and a watch being trained, and the whole station has got the song from An Officer and a Gentleman playing over the tannoy and I remember asking, ‘Why are they playing this, it’s not even a Christmas song?’

“Then I looked out the window and saw Jake coming up the stairs in his uniform. I’d completely forgotten about my joke about An Officer and a Gentleman proposal so it was completely out of the blue, but it was awesome.”

Jake is about to go away for six months with work but Sonya says they plan to get married later this year.